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SPEECH 



BENJAMIN WOOD, OF NEW YORK, 

f S IN THE 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEBRUARY 27th, 1863. 



Mr. Speaker : During the first session of the present Congress, and 
one week before the slaughter at Manassas had awakened our people to 
the realities of war, I offered in this House the following resolution : 

"Resolved, That this Congress recommend the Governors of the several 
States to convene their Legislatures, for the purpose of calling an election to 
select two delegates from each congressional district, to meet in general con- 
vention at Louisville, in Kentucky, on the first Monday of September next ; 
the purpose of the said convention to be to devise measures for the restora- 
tion of peace to our country." 

That resolution was laid upon the table. In its place, from time to 
time, emanated from this and other branches of the Government cer- 
tain edicts, laws, and proclamations which, while powerless to affect 
rebellion at the South, have revolutionized the political sentiment of 
the North. 

Sir, I sincerely believe that, had my resolution been adopted, the 
then vacillating feeling of the South would have been won to honor- 






til x 



able compromise, and the blessings of peace and Union would this 
day cheer the land. But even if ineffectual — looking back to the pe- 
riod when I presented it. and over the blood-stained record of the in- 
tervening time — I feel that its adoption could have lent no additional 
horrors to that fearful history. If the logic of events should bring 
the conviction that the course I then suggested might have averted 
from our country the curse of a desolating war, the responsibility of its 
rejection will not be mine. 

Sir, I desire to shun the language of reproach, and to avoid unne- 
cessary retrospection. I drag the past from its shroud only as an im- 
ploration for the future. For two years we have been leagued with 
death. We have inflamed ourselves into the wildest state of Apelike 
phrensy. In our legislative halls, in our market places, and in our 
temples of worship, we have tumbled the white image of peace from 
its pedestal. Upon the edge of the sword we have balanced our coun- 
try's fate. We have rebuked and villified, and chastised and shut out 
from the light of Heaven all those that would not re-echo the hoarse 
notes of war. 

Passion, excitement, an overstrained philanthropy, a false inspiration 
for the emblem of our nationality, a heroic but misdirected devotion to 
the Union, all these have had their sway. It is time that reason should 
sit in judgment, taking counsel only from humanity. We invoked the 
spirit of war to save — it came but to destroy. Our treasuries are 
emptied. Our posterity will be accursed with a crushing debt. Hun- 
dreds of thousands of our bravest rest in untimely graves. As many 
more, limbless, with shattered frames or broken by disease, moan in 
hospitals, or crave alms by the highways. Everywhere the garb of 
mourning afflicts the eye — a silent reproach from orphans, widows, and ' 
bereaved parents. The death blow, struck upon the battle-field, is felt 
in the cottager's distant house. There you may find the saddest record 
of the war. You will trace it in the lines upon the matron's brow ; 
you will see it in the whiteness of the young bride's cheek ; you will 
hear it in the subdued tones of the father's voice, who feels the staff 
of his age shivered from his grasp. Graves in our valleys, sufferers in 



our hospitals, desolation at every hearth-stone, distrust in our rulers, 
distrust in ourselves, bankruptcy, anarchy, and ruin — these are the 
triumphs won by your relentless policy. 

All that has been done is but what, were the past revocable, reason 
and humanity would recall. With all respect for the valor of our 
armies, aud without reproach to the capacity or fidelity of our generals, 
not one tangle of this gordian knot has the sword severed ; not one 
avenue has it carved through the frowning and steadily-enlarging bar- 
rier between North and South. 

The close of each campaign tells the repeated tale of victories bar- 
ren of all fruits, or of defeats with an equal absence of result ; of ad- 
vance and retrogression ; of generals hurried up to the high post of 
honor, and as hastily thrust aside. The Administration, through its 
partizan presses, occupies the people with rich promises of achieve- 
ments in the future, but achieves only the stale nothings of the past. 
Assuming that the reconstruction of the Union is the object of the 
struggle, I ask every citizen not wilfully blind to our present condition, 
have we not been receding from that object? Has all this blood-let- 
ting abated one jot the fever of rebellion ? Has it not confirmed its 
malignity — deep-seated it into the very Southern heart ? Sir, it has 
done more ; it has mad« disunion the sentiment of the entire South. 

It is habitual to throw the weight of responsibility for our impotence 
upon the Administration and its generals. Imbecility and incompe- 
tence have indeed been sufficiently conspicuous, but not to these do I 
attribute the failure, the utter, unequivocal, and irremediable failure of 
our enterprise of conquering back the Union. The failure of the 
scheme is simply due to the impossibility of its accomplishment. We 
can never, by force of arms, control the will of a people our equals in 
the attributes of enlightened manhood ; and while the will of that peo- 
ple remains adverse to political companionship with us, political com- 
panionship is impossible. Bloodshed, destruction of property, and oc- 
cupation of lands are possible ; much suffering, grief, and folly are pos- 
sible — we have too sadly proved it; but a constrained Union of sov- 
ereign States is an impossibility, which, if omnipotence could accom- 



plish, omniscience would not attempt. Six millions of Americans, 
whether they occupy the North, the South, the East, or the West, can- 
not be governed except in accordance with their sovereign will. 

Sir, I mean this not as an idle compliment to the American character. 
The experience of the past twelve months has revealed in that so much 
of passion, pride, and blood thirst, that I am more inclined to humility 
than boas'tfulness. I feel that upon the fresh, pure soil of the New 
World we have thrown the seeds of discord, and they will take root. 
But while my experience, and the testimony of our fathers through 
eighty-seven years of "prosperity and progress, have well established 
my faith in the beneficence of a Union of the States, I cannot under- 
stand that its blessings are of a nature to be enjoyed upon compulsion. 

But granting it possible, the question arises of equal moment, is it 
desirable ? Has not the struggle already been too fierce to admit of 
unity and cordial feeling between a conquering and a conquered section ? 
Sir, I fear it has. I believe that, while the memory of this war exists, 
the people of the North and South, united by constraint, would never 
sufficiently forgive the past year's record to admit of kindly relation- 
ship in the same political household. 

Bi°"ht or wrong, men will cling to their own impressions of a grea^ 
and sanguinary struggle, in which they or their sires have been partici- 
pants. As the living fathers of future generations this day feel, so 
will they bequeath to their children, and in natural course, the North 
and South will nurse their own and separate views of this unparalleled 
epoch of carnage and contention. 

Will the text-book of history conned by the boys of Massachusetts 
serve hereafter in tbe school-rooms of the Carolinas ? Will the stories 
of Manassas, of Shiloh, of Antietam, of Fredericksburg, of a hundred 
other battle-fields, be told in the same spirit northward and southward 
from the banks of the Potomac ? Will the winter tales be similar 
when the youth of either section gather about the hearthstone, and 
feel the young blood tingle in their veins at the words of white haired 
heroes ? Will the matrons of Louisiana train their offspring to venerate 
the name of Butler '( Will the remembrances of Davis, Lee, and 



Johnson be identical in New England and Virginia ? No, sir. Unless 
mutual consent should reunite us, the pages of history and the words 
of tradition will breathe of the sympathies that now exist; and the 
generations to come will as surely be educated to distinct and opposite 
prejudices. The school-room, the pulpit, and the press, would then, 
as now, inculcate doctrines that cannot assimilate ; and in this Capitol, 
the representatives of the people would be the represenatives of sec- 
tional antipathies. 

Sir, to avoid this, we must avoid inflicting the sting of submission, 
or engendering the pride of conquest. 

To me that future of domestic discontent, of jealousy, distrust, and 
irritation, is so palpable and painful, that, in place of giving life and 
treasure to attain it, I would make an equal sacrifice to escape it. Our 
fathers gave us a Union founded upon mutual consent, concession, and 
reciprocal attachment ; we would entail upon our children a political 
connection based upon hatred, suspicion, and opposing prejudices. A 
nationality thus constituted would be a mockery of republicanism and 
its bane. It would be as the consummation of a marriage where an- 
tipathy usurped the place of love; a political prostitution; the join- 
ing of hands befoi-e an altar whose divinity could attest the heart's irre- 
pressible loathing and disgust. Had I the faculty to crush with one 
blow the material power of the South, I would not strike. My pride 
as an American would revolt at the thought of dragging them, reluct- 
ant, helpless, and spirit-broken, into a fellowship that they abhor. 
Union restored by subjugation would be but the prelude of increasing 
altercation. It is not enough to affirm that I would not enforce the 
unnatural connection; sir, I would not consent to it. I would oppose 
it as a degradation to ourselves, an insult to our institutions, and a vio- 
lation of our principles of self-government. I would oppose it as an 
impediment to our national progress ; as a perpetuation of discord 
and contention between States, and as involving either its own future 
dissolution or the assumption by the general government of military 
and despotic functions fatal to republicanism. I confess, sir, that I 
apprehend no difficulties or misfortunes in the event of a separation, 



6 

at all commensurate with those that must inevitably prove the sequences 
of reunion by mere force of arms. 

I can conceive two great republics, expanding to grandeur, moving 
side by side upon principles almost identical, extending the area of 
self-government, the one northward and westward, the other southward 
and westward, united for mutual defence, and protected by a wise and 
generous alliance from the jar of conflicting interests. I can conceive 
them gravitating towards each other, drawing nearer and nearer as 
asperities and unpleasant memories soften with tbe lapse of time, 
until, when the safe and natural limits of political affinity shall have 
been determined, the two mighty nations shall merge again into one, 
upon a foundation perfected by the experiences of the past. But I 
cannot conceive a happy, prosperous, and republican Union, cemented 
by blood, remoulded in repugnance and prolonged by the submission 
of the weak to the dictation of the strong. 

A partnership in our Confederacy should be granted as a boon, and 
only to those that seek it ; not euforced as an obligation upon those 
that ask it not. It should be held a privilege to be proud of, not an 
imposition to shrink from and protest against. Were I certain that, in 
a military sense, this war would prove successful, nevertheless I would 
oppose it; for with the destruction of the resisting power of the South, 
would vanish every hope of their existence as equal and contented 
members of one household. How much more firmly then shall I op- 
pose it, when I feel that as a mere trial for supremacy in arms, it will 
result only in mutual exhaustion. 

In my view, therefore, this war, nominally for the Union, has actu- 
ally been waged against it. With that belief, rather than prolong it, 
I would concede a separation as the only means of an ultimate reunion 
upon such principles as a true republican should entertain. Animosi- 
ties have been engendered, and conflicting principles have been de- 
veloped by hostilities to an extent that renders reunion in the present 
state of feeling an event to shrink from as unnatural. Those con- 
flicting principles may be reconciled when the smoke of battle shall 
have passed away, but surely not until then. When every conciliatory 
measure shall have been resorted to in vain ; when negotiation shall 



< 7 

have been exhausted ; when the purpose of the Southern people to 
abstain from political companionship with us shall have been demon- 
strated as fixed and irrevocable, and not the passionate resolves of 
heated blood, then, as a necessity useless to struggle against, I shall 
not only counsel, I shall urge, a'separation. 

Sir, it is natural that, for every patriot, this word separation should 
be fraught with sorrow and foreboding. It is hard to realize the sun- 
dering of ties that we have been taught to believe sacred and eternal. 
He who beholds the shadow of death hovering above the scene of his 
domestic joys — the husband bending over the form of his dying wife, 
the father gazing at the ashen sign of dissolution that marbles the lin- 
eaments of his favorite child, in his agony rebels against providence- 
But when the spirit has flown, when what is earthly has been consigned 
to earth, and what is immortal has gone to its immortal home, the 
mourner bows before the will from which he knows that there is no 
appeal. Let us likewise bend before an inexorable truth. 

I cannot measure the affection of my countrymen for the sublime 
inheritance bequeathed to us; but I know that there dwells in my own 
breast a boundless love and a great pride for those principles which the 
builders of our nationality made the arch-pillars of their work. I 
yearn towards the Union with an intensity made only deeper by listen- 
ing to the solemn tones of its passing bell. In my childhood I was 
taught to love my country ; and my manhood has made that sacred 
lesson a part of my religion, a part of myself, an essence and a neces- 
sity in all that is spiritual within me. It is not that wild enthusiasm, 
that superficial glow so readily fed by grandiloquence and bonfires upon 
Independence day; but it is a steady and a reasonable love, matured 
by the conviction that beneficence, freedom, and prosperity are the 
attributes, and might be made the eternal accessories of our political 
institutions. 

Here, sir, has been a magnificent temple — as perfect in all its parts 
as human ingenuity and labor could make it — admirably suited to be 
the home of a great and happy family ; impervious to the assaults of 
foreign enemies ; the refuge of the oppressed; the pride of its inmates; 



the envy and wonder of the world. But upon what foundation was 
the structure built ? Sir, upon the free will of the people. Not of 
one State, or of one section ; but of all the States and of all the sec- 
tions. While that free will existed, the temple was of a nature to 
withstand the ravages of time. That free will has ceased to exist, and 
the temple has crumbled into dust. It is no more. It is a glory of 
the past. What you now conceive to be the structure is but a memory 
so intense that it seems reality ; but the substance is not there. He- 
build it if you can ; but you must first secure the free will of the 
South, which your armies and navies cannot do. 

Why, then, make loud protestations that the Union must and shall 
be preserved, when you lack the first requisite of preservation ? It 
were folly, sir, to do so, if it were but the dream of an infatuated 
people ; but when out of that dream comes the reality of bloodshed, 
ruin, and desolation ; when to sustain the illusion the stimulants of 
war, in its most terrible form, must be applied, it is no longer folly, it 
is crime. It is an invitation to the Almighty to launch his curse upon 
a blood-enamored race. 

If we will cease the mad attempt to enforce fraternity and to compel 
concord, perhaps the sundered links may be rejoined; but not one 
stroke will fall upon the anvil, until the echo of the last gun of the last 
battle shall have ceased to vibrate over the last battle plain. Self- 
exculpation and reproach alike must cease; for the country's salvation 
lies not in the justification of either section, but in the mutual remis- 
sion of offences. They have both their faults, but bending before hard 
blows is not among them. Doubtless wrong and injustice have been 
done ; but it is for calmer minds and less excited times to strike the 
balance, and mete out to either side the measure of its blame. It is 
not the original error that we have to do with now; it is the present, 
daily, continuous crime of multiplying human sacrifices to the spirit of 
our nationality, whose very essence is fraternal love. It is a spirit that 
was born of compromise and generous concession ; and now, when 
gory hecatombs are heaped before its shrine, ours is the fault if it 
loathe the offering and desert our desecrated temples. 

Sir, 1 appreciate the extent of this Government's military resources. 
I acknowledge its wonderful strength in ships, men, and munitions. 
Had we a foreign foe to grapple with, one-half the battles we have 
waged against the South would have decided the issue to our triumph. 
No earthly power could resist our magnificent machinery of war, di- 
rected in a cause that touched the people's heart. If the Confederate 



armies, all massed together and fired with the lust of subjugation, 
should invade one Northern State, the thought of our violated firesides 
would arouse an energy that would scatter the invaders like leaves be- 
fore the wind. But in this war we have no principle that comes home 
to the heart of the masses; we are fighting for subjugation; with a 
patriotic ulterior purpose, perhaps, but still for subjugation. If that 
is a principle, it is one that can never arouse the energies of the Amer- 
ican people. 

The foe has us at a disadvantage, sir. He believes that he is fight- 
ing for the sanctity of ids home; for the freehold of his native soil ; for 
social institutions that he was taught to justify; and for his concep- 
tion of self government. 

Sir, the American soldier, without sectional distinction, fights best 
in such a cause. No dream of laurel crowns can make the notes of 
war harmonious to his soul; no greed of conquest lures him to far-off 
battle plains. But where, within sight,, the smoke curls from his cot- 
tage chimney; where the corn waves in the furrow where he planted 
it, and the pastures and pathways about him are his familiar haunts, 
he stands a warrior born. He counts not the number of his foes; he 
measures not their strength ; he knows himself indomitable. 

Therefore it is that the South has maintained itself, defiant, resolute, 
and hopeful, against the most formidable military operations known in 
the history of war. The question of superiority in skill or courage is 
not at issue. In these we stand upon equality, and man's power to 
resist is greater than his equal's power to compel. The only prospect 
of accommodation rests in a calm, dispassionate appeal to the judgment 
and better feelings of the contending parties. 

With such convictions, and believing that every hour of hostilities 
tends to our further estrangement, I have never voted a dollar for the 
war. As a legislator, as a citizen, and a sa man, I claim to be absolved 
from all participation in this murderous strife. With all my humble 
abilities I have endeavored to arrest it. I shall still endeavor, and if 
in vain, let my efforts attest, before (rod and man, that I am unstained 
with the blood of my countrymen. 

If, by giving all latitude to argument, I could discover a possibility 
of effecting a friendly reconstruction by dint of terrible encounters be- 
tween armed hosts, I might look on in silence and patiently await the 
end. But even in the event of the most complete and crushing vic- 
tories, I see but the sullen, forced, and temporary submission of the 
vanquished to a rule that they abhor. Can this stabbing and Bhooting 



10 

and shivering with shells convince the wrong, or reconcile the angry, 
or inspire with confidence those that distrust, and with friendship 
those that hate us? Will time and habi make subjection acceptable 
to a proud and sensitive race? At this day Poland, struggling in her 
chains with hopeless desperation, is answering the question. When I 
look about me and see this spacious hall filled wi h enlightened gen- 
tlemen, clothed with great power and with great resp msibilities, I am 
amazed that with all this concentration of intellect upon one subject, 
no means can be devised to accomplish a political i nd, without convert- 
ing the country into shambles and its people into butcher? 

How the problem may be resolved I kuow nor ; but I know hat it 
is not in process of solution while armie-; are i n the field. While the 
energies of men on either side are concentrated upon warlike mea.-ures, 
it is impossible for their minds to dwell with deliberation upon expedi- 
ents for peace. It is no time to argue the terms of amicable adjust- 
ment with a duellist when his finger is on the trigger; he must first be 
invited to lower the instrument of death. The intellect of our states- 
men is now preoccupied with war; their natures, mental and moral, 
are under the control of that feverish excitement created by the con- 
templation of the changing fortunes of a desperate and bloody struggle. 
Grant them an interval of repose, a respite from the absolute tyranny 
that war exerts over the feelings of mankind, and their thoughts will 
revert into a natural channel, aud will seek to unravel these disordered 
political meshes with the patient labor of the brain. From us, as be- 
ing materially the stronger party, the proposition for an armistice can 
come with a good grace. Let wise and just men from all the States 
assemble in convention; if then, sir, no houorab e peace can be secured, 
my faith in human nature will have passed away. 

Sir, before that solemn conclave would come as an advocate the 
ghost of the buried year, with all its mournful memories, with its hun- 
dreds of thousands of ghastly spectres, with its record of anguish, be- 
reavement, and desolation; and its warning finger would point to a 
vision of the future, in semblance of itself, but more hideous a thou- 
sand fold. They would not dare to mock the warning. Passion and 
prejudice would shrink from the presence of that awful past. It would 
not be a gathering of excited partizans, but a council of grave men, 
assembled in the interests of humanity, in the same spirit of truth- 
searching as physicians deliberating to chase away a pestilence. Sir, 
such a convention would never adjourn to renew the signal of civil 
strife. They might fail to fulfil to the utmost the hopes of their con- 



11 

stituents ; they might concede too much on one side or the other; but 
never, from their calm judgment seats, would they launch again the 
thuu lerbolts of war upon our already bleeding and exhausted country. 

Sir, vou may have observed that I have spoken without regard to the 
views of other men, or the doctrines of political organizations. If I stand 
alone, my isolation conjures up no phantoms of doubt or fear While 
my country groans beneath the stroke of her own dagger, I forswear 
all allegiance to party. Whatever proposition, in my mind, shall en- 
hance the prospect of a peace, shall have my vote. Peace is the goal 
of my political course, the haven of my hopes. I care not by whose 
chart I steer, or whose hand shall guide the helm, so that the compass 
shall point thitherward. Whosoever shall raise its standard shall find 
me ready to serve beneath its folds. Whosoever shall blazon the olive 
branch for his device, shall have me his adherent. In whatever shape 
the demon of destruction shall appear, I will oppose him. In whatever 
garb the spirit of Peace shall clothe her radiant form, I will embrace 
her. Conciliation, compromise, or separation, each shall be acceptable 
to me, if as its consequence, we shall be spared the scourge of war. 
Let the most zealous emancipationist suggest a cessation of hostilities, 
and I am with him. Let the staunchest member of the opposition up- 
hold the war, and I am against him. I have no sympathies with those 
who denounce the Administration, and yet call for vigorous hostilities. 
In my view the abolitionist is a more honest politician and a more con- 
scientious citizen. He is a fanatic — not a mere time server ; wrong, but 
consistent in his wrong; the worshipper of a false god, but earnest in 
his adoration. Would that all who denounce him were as sincere and 
as bold in the expression of their opinion. I have striven to avoid in- 
vective, but I cannot repress my scorn for that American citizen who, 
at such a time as this, fashions his words according to the exigencies 
of a party, or in the mould of popular opinion. They plead that the 
people are not prepared for thfi naked truth. Sir, in this crisis, Truth 
may destroy the utterer, but it may save his country. 

Let the friends of peace proclaim themselves as such. Let them not 
fear to be premature. This day is not one day too soon for their lips 
to assert what their hearts know to be true. If the people are i,ot pre- 
pared, let us commence the task of preparation. It is a task already 
half accomplished, for indeed the masses, with their unerring instincts, 
have already fathomed the depths of this great sea of troubles. They 
would welcome reunion for its own sake and for the memories of old ; 
or, if inevitable, they would accept separation, with a sigh of regret, 



012 027 011 4 W 12 

and then push on alone in the broad path of progress; for their self- 
reliant, Anglo-Saxon natures would spurn the timid doctrine that the 
sturdy North, their North, built by their energies, and with millions of 
acres yet unreclaimed from the wilderness, for expansion, is dependent 
upon the South for prosperity and grandeur. 

Sir, for my country's sake I have performed a task that only the most 
solemn sense of duty could have induced me to assume. I have given 
you my thoughts as plainly as my gift of language would permit. For 
good or for evil, to my shame or to my future honor, let my words go 
upon record, to abide the test of time. No generous mau will accuse 
me of aiming at popularity, for all must acknowledge that I have not 
modelled my opinions upon the public sentiment ; and even those who 
think with me will doubtless withhold the present expression of their 
approbation. Paltering and equivocation have not been numbered in the 
list of accusations which my enemies have made against me. My 
motives have been and will be impugned, and probably, for a time, I 
must submit to be the object of denunciation ; but the rushing stream 
of events will soon efface the brand, and I can wait. I only ask my 
countrymen to adjudge me, not hastily or in anger, but after fair con- 
sideration. Neither the ties of relationship or pecuniary interest bind 
me to the South; all that I possess, and all that I hold personally 
dear are of the North. My course has been prompted by an intense 
conviction that the war policy is ruinously wrong. Reason, instinct, 
moral nature, and every faculty of man that creates within his brain 
a conception of the truth, inspire me wirh that conviction, with a rigid, 
fixed, and unfaltering faith, that knows no doubt and fears no refuta- 
tion. And as the days rush on through blood and carnage, they leave 
in their desolate path the confirmation of my creed. Already the time 
seems generating when patriotism will no longer be invoked as an in- 
centive to destruction ; when, over the graves of heroes, the ruins of 
homesteads, and the dreary wastes of devastated fields, the North and 
the South shall clasp their hands, cleansed from the stain of blood, 
Baying each to the other : " All is forgiven ; let what is terrible of the 
past be sepulchred with the ashes of the fallen." 



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Hollinger 

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